‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Very good indeed, Miss Motts. I am sorry to have challenged you in this way – but you did so well in the intelligence tests that we just wanted to find out what else you could do.’ He glanced at his colleague, who nodded.

‘So I think I can say we are both fully persuaded that you are most suitable for RDF training. Congratulations.’

20

For Vic, the demands of work seemed to become ever greater and more urgent.

During 1941 he had moved three times: first to Dundee, then to Dorset and now to just outside London. He was currently managing three teams working on extending detection ranges, refinements to ‘friend or foe’ systems and AI – air interception equipment that could be carried on the planes themselves, so they could detect the whereabouts of enemy aircraft without the need for sending signals back to land for interpretation. It was exciting, challenging and satisfying.

And yet – he had to admit it – when not at work he felt lonely and dispirited, cast adrift in a world that seemed intent on tearing itself to pieces. Cambridge days felt like a lifetime ago; all his previous research into the potential of radio waves for his doctorate was now completely outdated. War had provided the unexpected bonus of driving scientific invention at a rate that could never have been imagined in peacetime. If he ever went back into academia, it would have to be from an entirely different starting point.

His colleagues were a cheerful bunch in the main, but none of them came near to replacing the deep understanding of friendship he’d found with Johnnie, nor the surprising joy of human closeness he’d discovered with Kath. Although they were still writing to each other, he knew that the fragile links that had just begun to form between them would weaken still further with every month apart.

His father had written to tell him that Auntie Vera had finally succumbed to her mysterious illness: ‘a blessing, really, an end to her suffering’. They’d ‘given her a good send-off’, but Vic was not to worry about him being lonely, because he had met ‘a lovely lady called Diane’ at the bowls club.

It was this last nugget of news that filled Vic with the greatest unease. What did it mean? A delightful companion who would relieve his filial responsibilities, or a gold-digger after the old man’s fast-diminishing savings? He felt an urgent need to find out for himself, to reassure himself that his father, the only family he had left on this side of the world, was well and happy.

When he went to Tunbridge Wells for Christmas, his worst fears were realised. His father introduced her as ‘my lovely new wife, Diane’: a short, rather tubby sixty-something, with restless energy and an innate ability to say the wrong thing.

‘Let me have a proper look at you.’ She clasped his shoulders and gaped at him. ‘Heavens above, your father did warn me, but I never realised you’d be so dark.’